Catalogue description Palatinate of Lancaster: Court of Common Pleas: Declarations Files and Indexes

This series contains a complete collection of declarations (statements of the plaintiff's case against a defendant) relating to actions at the Court of Common Pleas of the palatine county of Lancaster from 1788 to 1849. These declarations were kept in sessional files by the Prothonotary of the Court. Earlier declarations were placed with other documents in the files of sessional papers.

The first person mentioned in the declarations is the defendant whose name appears in the index. There follows the outline of the plaintiff's case against him, the action involved being usually for trespass, ejectment or debt. The date of the declaration appears at the foot of it, under the plaintiff's signature, and the defendant's plea is recorded at the bottom right. Official comments, usually referring to process and date, appear in the left margin, below the declaration number.

The series also contains pye books or indexes which cover the period 1741-1875 and provide a means of reference to the declarations by defendants' surnames within each session. They were controlled formerly as IND 1/10332-10341 but have now been restored to their original reference numbers in this series (as PL 22/7-16).

These indexes refer to the defendant's name alphabetically, and are separate for each session, Spring or Summer. In some cases, until abolished in 1852, the fictional names John Doe and Richard Roe were used in actions; these are duly listed in the indexes with the defendant's real name supplied. The number supplied is the declaration number which appears in the left margin of each declaration.

The declarations were renumbered every session, so if a case went on into the next session, it is filed together with a new case bearing the same number. The index books do not coincide chronologically with the spans of the pieces of declarations.

Declarations and other court records after 1849 to 1868 were left behind in the Prothonotary's Office at Preston for possible use when most of the Palatinate's records were transferred to the Public Record Office in 1873, but their present location is unknown.